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by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Bad Luck, Developing Relationship, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic, Established Relationship, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Living Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Protective Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 18:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12965895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: Arthur returns from abroad.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Graywashed_Moony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graywashed_Moony/gifts).



> Written for Graywashed_Moony for Inceptiversary! My dear, I hope this hits the spot.

The door opens on a quiet apartment. Arthur hangs his jacket up over the hall closet door and toes his shoes off just inside. It’s still light enough to see down the hall. It’s Eames’ apartment, and Arthur’s still uncertain about walking in here, dropping a jingling string of keys and throwing his stuff around as Eames always does.

 _Make yourself at home, darling_ had been the directive on the first night, breathed brokenly against his lips, and Arthur had. Oh, had he ever, again and again.

Two months in has Arthur’s coats creeping into Eames’ closet and his socks mixed up in the resident laundry room basket, his books piling on the empty nightstand and his luggage side by side with Eames’ in the hall cupboard.

This one… may actually be Eames’. Arthur squints at the suitcase he’s brought in with him, jiggling the handle doubtfully. Would explain the crumpled straw wrapper and the two pennies lodged in the mesh pocket. 

Eames’ shoes lie overturned halfway down the hall, kicked off mid-step, and an empty mug sits on the credenza next to a framed photo of a Target model and her infant son. Arthur always knew better than to ask; his flat had the same faux homeliness before it got raided by the police. But there are signs of Eames everywhere, regardless: the kitchen light is on, the gaudy—and quite frankly ugly—runner pushed out of place by Eames’ track to the fridge, and a slumping grocery bag sitting in the middle of the breakfast table, half emptied. 

The alarm’s not on. Eames must be home. “Eames?”

No answer. Arthur pads into the kitchen, resisting the urge to straighten the rug. He goes for a glass of water, but the grocery bag stops him. Arthur sidesteps and reaches in.

Butter, so soft the stick bends between his fingers. Creamer, likewise warm and slightly bloated, and a peeling onion with a green shoot peeking out the end. There are no dishes in the sink; the same ones Arthur left still sit clean in the drainer, and the clocks are all flashing an incorrect time. The grocery receipt is from two days ago. Eames’ wallet lies on the counter, half open and tossed into the corner. Arthur whirls around, senses prickling, his hand going to the gun at the small of his back. 

But the place is quiet.

Until suddenly it isn’t: A horrendous _bang_ and a crash send Arthur jolting, fingers flexing around the weapon’s grip. He pulls the gun out, but a vociferous curse echoes down the main hallway.

A new disquiet surfaces; Arthur clicks the safety back on and lays the gun carefully on the table, then heads down the hall. “Eames,” he says, raising his voice to make sure he’s heard.

Three of these last weeks have been spent in Salamanca, sadly still a mysterious city to Arthur: the job had kept him squirreled away, out of sight of their mark’s numerous retainers, doggedly checking international news feeds and feeling Eames’ absence more with every moment. Eames’ texts, once or twice a day, were too jovial, riddled with the code of unsecured communication. They never really said anything, and Arthur would never have left him, not _now,_ except that with Eames’ passport flagged, his face on every wanted list in first world intelligence, and his accounts emptied by Interpol, someone had to make money.

Though… if he’s being honest, Arthur had welcomed a chance to get free of a steadily lowering apartment, away from the constant barrage of bad news, if only to remind himself of the reason he would inevitably come back.

Down the hall in the bedroom, that reason spits out another word, much uglier than Eames’ usual lexicon, and lobbed violently into the empty flat. Arthur’s unease solidifies. “Eames?”

A sigh. Arthur can picture him rubbing his face. “It’s alright, Arthur.”

It’s his voice that pauses Arthur’s step: hoarse. It trips on Arthur’s name, which only happened once when—He hurries down the hall, wheeling into the room to find Eames sitting on the bed.

The bang was the dresser, now fully on its face on the floor, the mirror in pieces just beyond it. Arthur checks immediately for blood, but Eames is whole, if somehow small on the end of his mattress. His undershirt looks dirty, worn for days, and he hasn’t bothered to shave. Arthur comes closer, but Eames shoots to his feet, belying the obvious exhaustion, and begins a rapid pace round the edge of the room. 

“Eames, the glass—”

“Fuck the glass,” Eames says tonelessly. He’s got his cell in hand, knuckles white around it. He’s shaking, badly enough to crack the slender screen, the way he’s squeezing it.

Despite the obvious warnings, Arthur snags his arm and drags him around the shards littering the floor. Eames doesn’t fight, but he doesn’t exactly cooperate, freeing himself as soon as he can and running a hand through his hair.

There are so many boundaries Arthur hasn’t crossed. Hasn’t felt comfortable lining the bathroom shelves with his toiletries or leaving the shower stall without wiping down the walls first, has to stop himself from asking anytime he wants a snack, does the pots and pans every night whether he cooks or not, unable to leave any sign of ingratitude behind, all while Eames watched bemusedly. But this is as far from bemused as Arthur has ever seen: something in him expected a suspension in the weeks he was away, a respite for them both. Instead, Eames has been slowly breaking apart alone in this little cage, texting a cheerful masquerade for a partner—are they partners? Yes, they’re living together, he supposes they are—who got up and escaped the first chance he got.

Arthur exhales, runs down his options. The authorities didn’t locate Eames, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. Eames is a survivor, and wily about it. He’d never remain to be caught and slung into prison or worse. The destruction of Arthur’s apartment, though the catalyst of their months of bad luck, is old news. There’s Eames’ entanglement with the law in Switzerland, ongoing. Saito’s cautious professional distance and cancellation of a lucrative job as a result. 

The last thing before Arthur left for Spain was the abrupt disappearance of Eames’ first protégé while on an extraction in Lebanon. “Is it Lia?”

Eames ignores him. Arthur has kept tabs, almost as a reprieve from the stress of Eames’ situation, but she’s been missing for weeks now, and Arthur’s optimism is waning day by day. And then suddenly Eames hurls his phone across the room into the headboard. Arthur freezes, shocked to stillness, then lunges for it. The left side of the screen is splintered, but he manages to wake it up, fingers flying instinctively to messages and text.

There it is, an unnamed contact with very clear words. “Oh, Eames.”

“I couldn’t even get there!” Eames roars. “Just had to sit here and _watch_ while it fucking happened.”

 _He passed last night,_ says the text. _It was peaceful._

“Who?” Arthur asks softly.

“My fucking father,” Eames retorts. 

He didn’t even know Eames had a father, not a living one. A mother, yes: a vague presence in some of Eames’ more private tales of how he became a forger in the first place. But family? The space between Eames and Arthur gapes, stinging in a way Arthur didn’t expect. He should know these things. Shouldn’t he? He lives here, with Eames; he shares a life with him, he _loves—_

Arthur swallows heavily. Realizes he’s clenching the phone now, too.

“Cancer,” Eames snarls. “Came on fast.” He’s still pacing, possibly over the glass now, but Arthur is having a difficult time focusing. “Couldn’t do a damn thing, just sit here on my arse, _useless.”_

“You’re not useless.” He’s trapped, that’s all, by circumstance; his mother can’t possibly fault him for not being able to come, not when she introduced him to this kind of life. Eames wouldn’t have been able to stop it if it was that deadly of a cancer anyway. Arthur should never have left, he should have known that the world could only keep bearing down on them, sticking its little knives in wherever it could find a tender spot. He remembers how it was after Mal jumped, how the hurts just seemed to crop up and compound, as though he and Dom had walked into a cloud of cursed air.

Arthur can deal with a lot, thanks to his line of work—spontaneous emergencies, changes in plan, random flybys courtesy of batshit crazy extractors—but he doesn’t know how to deal with this. An unfamiliar sensation hums to life in his chest. It takes him several uncertain seconds to realize that it’s the beginnings of panic. He shoots holes in projections, outruns cops in real life, and he panics over this?

 _This is more important._ Arthur shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, determined to think, to not let this of all things bring him low. He ignores his own tightening lungs. He listens to Eames breathe instead.

The energy seething from Eames is heady, tainted by fury, but not wholly unfamiliar. Some of it’s the same energy that tangles between them as they thrust and tug each other across bedsheets, as when Eames gets into the shower behind him and kisses his way down Arthur’s spine, as when Arthur pushes him up against the cabinet next to the pantry, one hand gripping the spice shelf while he pants against Eames’ open mouth.

This is one boundary he hasn’t dared touch. But it beams a feeble light onto everything. Arthur gets up from the bed and pulls his tie off. He winds it around one hand and settles it in a coil atop the night stand. _His_ night stand. His side of the bed, shared again and again with the man before him, without comment or question, but with quite a lot of expectation that Arthur has, frankly, not been meeting. 

Eames never gives voice to it. Never would. Arthur wonders, for an aching second, just how Eames has interpreted his recent absence.

“Use me,” he says, facing Eames.

That gets his attention. Eames turns his head, just a little, until his fringe falls across his eye and half his face hangs in shadow. “What?”

Arthur unbuttons the collar of his shirt, then spreads his arms out. “Whatever you need to do.”

Eames comes closer, then stops. He looks baffled, red-eyed, but no longer raging. “Arthur,” he says, still breathing hard. “What exactly are you offering here?”

“Sex. I consent.” It’s not defined, but Arthur is aware that, though he’s not always the instigator, he is usually the one pressing them forward as it happens, arranging Eames as he likes—as Eames likes. Urging Eames to wait, _wait for me, not yet. Just hold it._ He would not call Eames submissive exactly; he’s never had a relationship like that in his life and still isn’t sure what it would mean. But if one of them does dominate, then by a fine, thin line, it is Arthur.

And Arthur isn’t the one who needs it today. “I want you to have control over this.”

They’re a hairsbreadth away from disaster here, and an embarrassment Arthur doesn’t think he’d ever get over. But Eames doesn’t scoff, or laugh, or react much at all. He does bridge that last few feet between them. Arthur remains as he is, arms akimbo, feeling a flush crawl up his throat.

And then Eames does snort, a tired sound that echoes weirdly in the quiet room. “I don’t… really know what to do with that.”

“Whatever you want. You tell me and I’ll obey.” Arthur swallows, watches Eames’ eyes flicker to follow. He’s expecting second thoughts, that the longer he has to think about it, the worse he’ll feel. But nothing rises into the great maelstrom he’s opened up. Just him, and Eames, and the need to help.

There’s a strange sort of fear behind Eames’ eyes. His hand stalls a few inches from Arthur’s chest. “What about a safeword?”

Not necessary, the way Arthur sees it. He shrugs. “If I don’t like it, I won’t do it.”

Eames jerks a nod. He reaches for Arthur’s shirt again, and at the last minute, draws his hand back. 

Turns away.

Now the humiliation is catching up with Arthur. His swallow this time sounds louder to him than the dresser had going over. He clears his throat, reaches for his shirt buttons. Maybe if he just—

“Stop.”

He does. It’s not even a thought. Eames peers at him, still mostly faced away. His eyes are fixed on Arthur’s chest, on Arthur’s hands poised over his sternum. Eames pads closer, sidestepping the glass with barely a glance. He unbuttons Arthur himself, a slow, silent baring. Arthur stands there breathing loudly through his nose, and not touching. Shaking.

Eames folds the shirt back off his shoulders, skims it down Arthur’s arms, and drops it silently to the floor. He leans in close, and Arthur shuts his eyes, certain to feel the press of lips on his face. Eames doesn’t touch. His mouth skirts, a breath away, warm air skating over Arthur’s nose, cheeks, eyelids.

“Kiss me,” Eames whispers after an unnerving moment.

Arthur does.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for the open ending. Knowing me, if I continued, it would end up very long and having not written dom/sub before in my life, I fear I would probably screw it up anyway. *hides*


End file.
